Stéphanie Boulay - SOCAN Song of the Week

Words + Music is the online magazine of SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. Just as SOCAN was formed in 1990 by the merger of its predecessor Canadian performing rights organizations PROCAN and CAPAC, their separate magazines merged in 1994 to form Words + Music. Our mission is to provide interesting, high-quality content about the increasingly exciting and

Rédacteur En Chef:

Hey Rosetta! chief songwriter Tim Baker takes a literary approach

Tim Baker has a problem. As frontman for Newfoundland’s Hey Rosetta!, one of Canada’s fastest-rising, hardest-working bands, he’s touring for 150 dates a year, performing concerts on three continents. Trouble is, Baker is also the group’s chief songwriter and he has yet to master the knack of writing songs on the road.

“When I finally get home, it’s difficult for me to set time aside because there’s so much else to do,” admits Baker. “Your house is falling apart, you haven’t seen your friends forever, and you have to design the band’s next T-shirt. All this stuff creeps in, and the writing gets pushed out.”
Despite those obstacles, Baker has been able to write songs for all three of the band’s orchestral indie-rock recordings, including last year’s best-selling Seeds, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Polaris Prize. And his compositions, such as “There’s an Arc” from Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood), are among the most thoughtful and literate in Canadian pop.

Baker formed Hey Rosetta! in 2005, after graduating from the creative writing program at Montreal’s Concordia University (he had intended to enroll in piano performance, before a case of tendonitis thwarted his audition plans). Armed with the editing discipline he’d acquired in Concordia’s poetry class, Baker began singing his newly penned songs solo around his native St. John’s, until he realized the music needed more texture and recruited other musicians.

From the beginning, Hey Rosetta! has been rooted in Baker’s literary interests. The exclamation mark in the band’s name was inspired by Dave Egger’s memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. “That book is very hyperbolic, doubtful and tragic yet celebratory – always in flux,” says Baker. “It made me want to do something like that musically.”

Assisting Baker in achieving the shifting sounds are cellist Romesh Thavanathan, violinist Kinley Dowling, bassist Josh Ward, drummer Phil Maloney and guitarist Adam Hogan, who co-wrote three of the songs on Seeds. Two of those, the title track and “Young Glass,” draw from novels: Leonard Cohen’s The Favourite Game and J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey respectively. “Yer Fall,” meanwhile, is Baker’s homage to James Agee’s Death in the Family..

“I realized the beauty of just letting a song be one thing… Just a simple song that’s undeniably good.”

Musically, Baker cites Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and the Beatles – music he grew up listening to around his family home – as his biggest influences. But Hey Rosetta!’s driving rock rhythms, stirring choral vocals and orchestral arrangements, written by Baker, Hogan and Thavanathan, mostly bring comparisons to Radiohead and Arcade Fire.

“Strings are an important addition to our songs,” says Baker. “They deepen and heighten things and provide textures that I would never want to do without. That being said, a string section is not something you can have in every song. And it can certainly pose challenges in a live setting.”
Still, the novelty of strings brought early attention to the band. So, too, did praise from Hawksley Workman, who predicted Hey Rosetta! would become “Canada’s next big thing.” Workman produced Into Your Lungs and the Juno-winning artist pushed the band to achieve its sonic ambitions on songs from the hymn-like “Psalm” to the anthemic “We Made a Pact,” featuring singer Jenn Grant. Into Your Lungs was named Album of the Year at the inaugural Verge Music Awards held by XM Satellite Radio channel The Verge and was, like Seeds, shortlisted for the Polaris Prize.

Workman, whose production credits include recordings by Sarah Slean, Serena Ryder, Tegan and Sara and Justin Rutledge, also produced Newfoundland’s Great Big Sea. But while the latter and Hey Rosetta! have Workman and their Atlantic geography in common, the similarity ends there. Says respected author-journalist Stephen Brunt, who has booked Hey Rosetta! for his annual Writers at Woody Point festival in Newfoundland’s Gros Morne: “There’s a lot of interesting music in St. John’s that’s not rooted in jigs and reels. Hey Rosetta! represents 21st century Newfoundland – a band proud of where they come from, but outward-looking and very much of the world.”

Preconceived notions about Newfoundland music have placed Hey Rosetta! in challenging situations. Once, at a concert in St. George, New Brunswick, a crowd showed up to hear ‘a band from Newfoundland’ and was disappointed by the lack of reels and jigs in the band’s set. Recalls Baker: “It was a bit of an awkward night, but pretty funny in the end. We were just doing our thing.”
Brunt helped to boost the band’s profile when he featured its song “Red Heart” in his video montage celebrating national pride at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games on CTV. An estimated 20 million people heard the song’s stirring refrain, “Won’t you let your red heart show?”
For Seeds, Hey Rosetta! turned to Scottish producer Tony Doogan, who had worked with England’s Belle and Sebastian and Mogwai. He’d also produced Halifax rockers Wintersleep, with whom Hey Rosetta! share management. Doogan was able to “deepen the dynamics” on Seeds, according to Baker, focusing on one song at a time to create a tonal distinctiveness for each track.

Baker, meanwhile, took a new approach to his songwriting. “There was a time when I wanted every song to be everything,” he recalls. “Fast and slow, up and down, loud and soft, all in one song. I realized the beauty of just letting a song be one thing, without a lot of tempo changes and big builds. Just a simple song that’s undeniably good.”

Production and songwriting strategies paid off. Seeds debuted at No. 3 at iTunes Canada, while the singles “Yer Spring” and “Welcome” topped the charts at Canadian radio, helping the album to achieve in excess of 20,000 in sales. Touring in support of Seeds, Hey Rosetta! took its passionate live show back to the United States, Australia and Europe, where the band continues to build a devoted fan base. And it shared stages in Canada last summer with Buck 65, Broken Social Scene and the Tragically Hip.

Baker sometimes gets mentioned alongside the Hip’s Gord Downie for his ambitious lyricism. But the Hey Rosetta! frontman, while flattered, rejects the comparison. “Gord is much freer than I am,” says Baker. “He has this ability to connect disparate lyrical images and make them really powerful. I write almost like an essay, putting forth an idea and then trying to make it palatable and rhythmic and catchy, but still maintaining the cohesion of the idea. I’m still stuck in that old-fashioned way of writing.”

For Brunt, Baker is the epitome of a literate songwriter, which is why he’s featured the band twice at the Woody Point writer’s festival. “Tim loves language and ideas, and he’s not frivolous in any way with his lyrics,” says Brunt. “They’re deeply felt and deeply thought out. He’s a serious, honest writer, and his lyrics have a strong emotional streak. Ultimately, I think his writing is sophisticated without being self-consciously literary.”

Baker, who went through a phase where he read every John Steinbeck novel, makes no apologies for his bookish approach to songwriting. “I read a lot and I’m influenced by that,” he says. “If you’re going to write words, why not study really great writers and take a page from them?” He adds: “If you’re going to get up in front of a room full of people and basically yell things, which is what a band does, you should really make them worth yelling.”

The year 2012 promises to be another filled with plenty of touring and yelling, as Hey Rosetta! performs again at summer festivals and headlines their own bigger concerts. With luck, there will be time in fall or winter to start recording the band’s next album. But first, Baker will have to find time to write another album’s worth of songs.

“Whenever I’m home, that’s all I want to do,” he says. “It’s the happiest I ever am, after I’ve written a song. I miss it so much when we’re touring.” Does he have anything yet in the can? “I’ve got a few things, but it’s hard to know what’s going to work with the band,” he replies. “I’m definitely a pack rat of ideas. I like to save every little image or melody and try to stick them all together. Sometimes they come out like little Frankensteins. Nothing compares to sitting down at night and just receiving a song and in half an hour it’s done. But that doesn’t happen very often.”

Baker admits that in order to meet Hey Rosetta!’s demand for songs (not to mention the novel he’d like to one day write), he’s going to have to create the right time and space. “I don’t have a writing cabin or anything like that,” he says.

And life on the road has so far proven to be incompatible with songwriting. “I find it really difficult to write when there are people around,” explains Baker. “Being in a hotel room with three other people, watching TV or carrying on, I can’t find the quietude I need.” Then, imagining a more luxurious Hey Rosetta! future, he adds, with a laugh: “Maybe I’ll be able to do that some day, when I get my own hotel room.”

Canadian Classics: “Maybe Tomorrow” (1977)

To Canadians of a certain age, those words are as embedded in the brain as any No. 1 pop hit. The theme to The Littlest Hobo, CTV’s show about a heroic German Shepherd, has endured as one of the country’s greatest TV tunes. And with the series still in syndication around the world, its co-writer continues to receive praise from listeners touched by the song. Terry Bush, now retired, tells us about its legacy.

How did you come to write the theme for The Littlest Hobo?
I was strongly in the jingle business when I got a call from Simon Christopher Dew who was producing a remake of The Littlest Hobo, which had been on in black-and-white in the 1960s, and he said he wanted a new theme for it. He explained what the show was and what they were looking for, and I got together with a friend from the ad business, John Crossen, who is a lyricist, and we put a demo together. I sang and wrote the music. And it was hated.

Like so many Canadian Classics, the execs didn’t “hear” it right away?
It was rejected by the production company, who got someone from New York to produce a new song. But then they decided they didn’t like that either and came back to me. There was a lot of re-writing, but I was very pleased with it in the end.

What was the initial reaction when the show aired?
The show was very popular worldwide. And that was kind of the end of it for me, for a while. But when I was doing it a musician friend told me not to give up my royalties. CTV wanted to pay me, work for hire. But instead I wrote it for nothing and kept my royalties. I didn’t mange to keep the publishing.

When did “Maybe Tomorrow” start appearing in TV ads?
In 1999, I heard from someone that the song was being used in a commercial in England. I checked it out and, son of a gun, it was the National Westminster Bank, an award-winning ad, a huge success. So I got on the phone to CTV and said, “Hey, they’re using our song.” Deluxe Paints used it too a few years back.

Is that why you decided to re-record and release the song yourself?
Yes, I put together a CD of my own so people could actually buy the song. Because if you go to YouTube there are all these different versions, but not the original. I produced this in my own studio, and I stuck to it as close as I could, with a new verse written by John. Since I put it on iTunes. I’ve been inundated with letters from people thanking me, telling me stories about how it brings back memories.

What is your fondest memory of creating it, looking back?
I was just trying to write a nice song, and get the rolling feel of the dog running through the woods. And John wrote beautiful lyrics that captured the whole feeling of the show. I found out in England they sing it in pubs at the end of the night. The show is huge in England and the show is still popular here.

The rising fortunes of Dan Mangan

Story by David McPherson | December 30, 2011

Perspective.
It’s something we all want. It’s something we all think we have. Yet it’s something few truly understand, and many misunderstand. Lack of perspective keeps some from getting the most out of life and others remaining bitter, angry, and out-of-touch to the world’s realities. Still others view the world from too narrow a perspective that closes their eyes to what matters most. One definition, according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, is “a mental view of the relative importance of things.”

Perspective is something Dan Mangan sings about a lot on his latest album Oh, Fortune, released in September. It’s one of many themes and metaphors he mines from the recesses of his mind. The Vancouver singer-songwriter’s last disc Nice, Nice, Very Nice (2009) certainly exceeded his expectations; it helped him put his music career into perspective while opening many doors. The record was his coming-out party, if you will. It was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, it won iTunes Album of the Year in the singer-songwriter category, and he was named XM The Verge Artist of the Year, an honour that came with a $25,000 prize..

“What I’ve learned is that it’s okay to not have the right answer… I don’t need to suffer because I haven’t figured it out.”

Words + Music caught up with Mangan in the musician’s perennial home away from home – the tour van – following the white line and passing the time talking about the 11 choice cuts on Oh, Fortune, which debuted at No. 9 on the Soundscan charts.

One of the songs that speaks directly about perspective is “Leaves, Trees, Forest.” “That song is about isolation, and it’s also about perspective,” says Mangan. “The idea is that when you are focused on the leaves, then all you see are the leaves. When you focus on the tree, you forget the leaf, and all you see is the tree. Then, when you look at a great distance, you see the forest in its entirety. You are now so disconnected from how incredibly intricate and marvellous that leaf was in the first place.

“That’s a metaphor for a lot of things,” he adds. “The world is very chaotic with a lot going on… Trying to give yourself as much perspective as you can is really all you can do. What I’ve learned is that it’s okay to not have the right answer. It’s okay to say, it’s bigger than me and I don’t need to suffer because I haven’t figured it out.”

Like Grammy-award winner Daniel Lanois, Mangan is also fascinated by sonic textures. He appreciates both the sounds and the emotional places where they take him. “I love how different sounds make me feel,” he says.

On Oh, Fortune, those sounds lead down some roads less taken. The literate songsmith opens listeners’ eyes and ears to many issues without preaching or teaching. Through metaphor and music, Mangan sends a message; but, when asked about it, he says he’s not trying to enlighten anybody.
“I don’t give myself enough credit to do that,” he says. “It’s just my own mental process to take the thoughts in my head and put them to music… I’ve written a lot of songs in my life. I’ve changed perspective of the songwriter and that voice. My last record, a lot of it was stream-of-consciousness and my perspective.

“With this record, there are more narratives – fictional or non-fictional characters,” Mangan continues. “We [me and my band] spend a lot of time on the road, and we meet a ton of people – gas station attendants in the middle of nowhere, for example. You stop, top up the tank, buy a cup of coffee, and you look at someone and you think, ‘What is your life like?’ It’s got to be very different from mine. Having spent the last few years travelling around the world, it’s inspiring. It reminds you how different everyone is.”

While Mangan feels the new record is the “most honest representation of my thoughts and the noises in my head,” the cut he’s most proud of is “Jeopardy.” The song starts off very personally and then branches into broader territory.

“It’s a very healthy thing to get vulnerable sometimes,” Mangan explains. “One of the lines in that song I am most proud of is: ‘What happens if all flags burn together?’ It’s this idea that everybody has this age-old one-up on each other, looking at each other and seeing where they stand in the structure. If I burn my flag and you don’t burn yours, it’s sort of like I’ve gotten vulnerable and you haven’t.

“You don’t want to get vulnerable,” he adds. “But what if we all burn the flags at the same time and just go back to zero? Maybe that’s unity… Maybe that’s letting go and all being vulnerable together.”